There is a huge difference between exhibitionism and true vulnerability, in a day when half of teenagers studied go public with drugs, sex, and alcohol, courtesy of Myspace and similar.

It is always a little awkward to listen in on truly intimate conversation, because even today some things don’t get shared. It’s my sense that we’ve as a culture have grown savvy about how we publish ourselves: anger, bravado, risk, sexual experimentation, and sexual humiliation—these are all for public consumption, while insecurities, long-term love, spiritual doubts, abuse, and things that go bump in the dark—these we keep hidden.

Sometimes, I believe, we pseudo-confess sexual stories for the purpose of directing attention away from our real selves. In Christian sub-cultures, I’ve seen people confess sexual activities, for instance, when the deeper issue is their relationship with family.

The shifting frontiers of privacy and confession are partly what make Jesus, You Know so thrilling. It’s an Austrian film from a few years back, now out on DVD, featuring several Catholic believers praying out loud (in German with subtitles), in empty churches, with the camera rolling.

The net result, over several sessions, is an impression of a living, breathing, and small remnant of devout believers in Catholic Austria. In a weird way, it’s a family reunion, in which we meet new cousins.

The narrative I’ve heard over many years of involvement with European protestants (and American missionaries) is that of a largely dead and aggressively anti-protestant (especially missionary protestant), Roman Catholic Church, with close ties to the state. This film, with its half dozen subjects of varying levels of spirituality, has effectively opened my eyes to a broader fellowship of believers.

One person in particular. A young man, roughly 19 years old, who struggles with his parents at the transition to adulthood, entangles this struggle with faith. He wants to choose God over family, but, it becomes clear, “God” means prayer meetings with friends, and “family” means not cleaning his room. His prayer about the problem is so familiar to what I’ve seen through InterVarsity and church that it’s a little unnerving. This could be any small group in the dorms, albeit with baroque crucifixes on hand.